Confidence vs Arrogance

I get told all the time that I’m arrogant.   People don’t know the difference between arrogance and confidence.  They use these words interchangeably.  Most people think a confident person is arrogant.  They see arrogance as negative, so they don’t become a confident person.  There is a huge difference between someone being confident and someone being arrogant.  In this post I will show you the difference between confidence and arrogance.

Arrogance is pure ego and it comes from a place of insecurity.  It comes from a lack of believing in yourself, but you need to appear a certain way.    Arrogance comes from a feeling of entitlement.   They are a kind of person who feels they deserve to be a certain way without anything to back it up.  It’s entitlement.  I should just get this without any work.  They think they are very good without having to do anything.  We have all been around people like that.  Growing up in sports, I have been around a million of them, but I have also been around several of them in day to day life.  They are the people who have never worked for anything in life.  They are all lip service.  They love to let people know they are they best.  They never do any of the work it takes to be good.  They are more concerned with an image than they are with actually achieving anything.  

Confidence is faith in yourself.  Believing in your own abilities.  Confidence does not come out of thin air.  It comes from all the work you have done to achieve what you want.  This is not just physical work, it is mental work too.  Confident people will tell you they are good, but they have done the work and research to back it up.  Confident people have put in the hours and hours of work.  Confidence does not come from entitlement, it comes from knowing you deserve what you have earned.  Confident people do stuff in the background that no one sees.  The have done the work to get better.  

It is so much easier to be arrogant than it is to be confident.  It is a lot easier to do nothing and expect everything than it is to do the work, be humble and thankful for the things that come your way.  Confident people will say things like, “I can be better” or “I need to learn more”.  You will rarely find a confident person saying, “I know everything” or “There is nothing else I can achieve”.   A confident person knows they always have something to work on and they a certain level of humility.  

Falling into the trap of arrogance is what will keep you from getting better.  This is why so many young kids who are really good at a sport don’t become a superstar.  People start telling them how good they are and they quit working on the things that got them to that point.  They become arrogant.  Don’t fall into the trap of ego and know how to distinguish between the two.  Confidence is built.  You don’t just have confidence you build it like any other skill.   

Now that you know the difference get rid of that mental block that keeps you from becoming confident.  If you think arrogance is confidence you will never be confident.  Knowing what confidence really is will break that mental block so you can become confident without thinking you’re arrogant.  You earned it so you might as well start acting like it.